Trying to understand Lithuanian beer

Now that I've visited Lithuania three times, and finally gotten to
actually meet some of the brewers, I feel I am at last beginning to
understand a least a little of Lithuanian beer. This post is my
attempt to do a little analysis and put what I've learned into some
kind of order.

So, what is it that sets Lithuanian beer apart? The farmhouse ales
brewed with unique traditional yeast strains are obviously part of it,
but only a part. Lithuania has a whole culture of beer different from
the others. Just about every beer in the world is brewed in a style
that ultimately derives from either Belgium, England, or what we could
call the areas of German culture. Sahti, kvass, and a few others are
the only exceptions I can think of, except for Lithuanian beer.

Of course, I should now be able to list a whole set of new
Lithuanian styles of beer that nobody's heard of, but the list is
actually not that long. So far, all I have is kaimiškas
(farmhouse ale), keptinis (the beer style brewed
by Ramūnas Čižas), and perhaps duminis (smoke
beer, now extinct). The reason for this seems to be that the concept
of style is not really used much in Lithuania. Beers are generally
named by colour, or have completely individual names.

When we asked Lithuanian brewers what type their beers were they
never really had the answer ready. They had to stop and think, and
would usually tell us that it was "lager" or "ale". My impression was
that they were trying to use terms they assumed would be at least
minimally descriptive to us, but that really we were forcing them to
put labels on something that didn't really have a label in their
minds.

Bačkorių

This impression is reinforced by the look we got at their brewing
methods. Everyone seemed to be doing it in different ways, and
producing completely different kinds of beer, even if there still was
a kind of family resemblance. As I've written
before, it's similar to how Belgian beers resemble one another
across styles.

Another way in which I'd say that Lithuania has a beer culture is
that beer generally seems to be a more important part of daily life
than elsewhere. All kinds of people, of all ages, seem to find it
normal to drink beer at any time of day. As you'll see there are also
a whole set of customs around the consumption of beer. For a brewer to
serve us his beer without having some himself, even if it is only a
token amount, seems unthinkable.

Not only that, but they seem to take considerable pride in their
beer heritage (entirely reasonably), and to consider it an important
part of their own culture. It's also clear that all the places
cropping up serving "special" beers are focusing very much on
Lithuanians themselves more than on tourists, so the beer renaissance
that's taken place in Lithuania is clearly a national affair, and one
that foreigners are only now beginning to discover.

In fact, Lithuanians seem to have an unusual degree of awareness of
their traditional culinary heritage in general. And that heritage is
actually bigger than you'd expect. Lithuanian cheese seems worthy of a
study of its own, for example. There's a good number of restaurants
offering traditional Lithuanian food, and even a chain focusing on it,
called Forto Dvaras. There's even
a culinary heritage organization that certifies that restaurant
recipes truly follow traditional practices for that particular dish.
That organization has listed Ramūnas Čižas and Jovaru
Alus on their Lithuanian culinary heritage list, with good reason.

It's worth pointing out that it's not just the beers that are
interesting, but also in many cases the bars.
Prie Uosio (photo above) and Šnekutis Užupio are among
the most unique bars I've ever visited, and several others like Bamb
Alynė and Špunka are very, very good. All of these worth
visiting even if you don't care about beer at all.

I guess with this background it shouldn't be so astonishing that so
many of these beers are of extremely high quality. You may well wonder
why, if they are so good, ratings on Ratebeer are not that impressive.
I think this has several reasons. One is that many of the beers are
just good, rather than outstanding. Another is that many people don't
understand what they're drinking. They start with low expectations,
find something completely different to anything they've had before,
and, in short, "don't get it". Also, quality is sometimes less than
consistent.

The Great Courtyard of Vilnius University

But, most of all, many of these beers don't keep for long, travel
poorly, and are not always well treated. The result is that a beer
that is a mind-blowing experience at the brewery is often just pretty
good in Vilnius, and thin acidic crap by the time it's shared at a
tasting in someone's home in Scandinavia. It's a real shame, and
something I hope Lithuanian brewers, distributors, and bar owners will
work on.

Anyway, this is by any measure one of the world's foremost beer
cultures, and one that nobody with an interest in beer can reasonably
ignore. So what makes it special? Well, what's special about Belgian
beer? Is it the yeast? Partly, but most of all it's the entire
culture, a combination of ways of thinking, ingredients, methods, and
styles. Lithuania has that, and like the Belgians they owe it to
nobody else, and have developed it to a surprisingly high quality.

To give you a better idea of what I'm talking about, let's try and
go through some examples of that makes this such a unique culture.

First and foremost in everyone's minds, I think, are the
traditional farmhouse brewers, producing beers in the ancient,
prehistoric Lithuanian styles, using the equipment, methods, and
ingredients of their forefathers. And, amazingly, the ancestral yeast,
a species unique to Lithuania. There's a number of these who brew
non-commercially, but also quite a few (at least four) who brew
commercially.

In the next tier of size up from the farmhouse brewers there are
also many very interesting brewers. Most of these seem to have started
from a farmhouse brewing background, but to have scaled up and
modernized their operations. Some, like Piniavos, Kupiškio and Su
Puta, have stuck closely to the original farmhouse style. Others, like
Joalda, Davra, and Rinkuškiai, have
modernized away from the farmhouse tradition, and seem to me to have
invented their own traditions in doing so.

Belmontas brewpub, Vilnius

Joalda is the example I know best, brewing with a combination of
top- and bottom-fermentation, producing what might be the most
supremely drinkable beer I have ever tasted. Beers that, amazingly, do
not lose their allure after the fifth pint. I know, because I got to
try it. Without having the facts to hand (hey, they're not exactly
easy to come by), I'm sure there are a whole range of other brewers
like Joalda producing unique beers with unique ingredients and
methods. Tarušku and Dundulis seem to fit here. Every single one
of these breweries is really worth exploring.

A word of caution is in place at this point. Many of these brewers
also make strong beers of about 8% in 1-liter PET bottles for poor
people who want a buzz. They make a good income from this, but clearly
do not put their souls into brewing them. Biržu
Alus makes a number of these, and I assume Joalda's Vulkanos falls
in the same category.

Another big group are small brewers that seem to be using mostly
normal ingredients and methods, but which produce what seems to me
beers with recognizably Lithuanian tastes, and of very high quality.
I'd put Vasaknų
Dvaro, Gintarino, Tores, and a whole bunch
more into this group.

Finally, we get to the smaller industrials, a group comparable to
the English regional breweries, producing beers that are less unique,
of slightly lower quality, but still interesting, different,
worthwhile, and drinkable. Like the Joaldas, they also produce some
lower-quality beers for necessary income. I'd put at least Biržu Alus,
Vilkmerges, and Gubernija in this group.

Of the typically Lithuanian flavours that seem to recur in many of
these beers, I think the Lithuanian malts are responsible for the
dusty strawy flavours many of the pale beers have. Some people seem to
be describing this as a "hay" flavour. Many of the farmhouse-style
beers have a very unusual nutty oily flavour, which might come from
the yeast, from mashing techniques, or from something else. Strong,
deep earthy flavours are very common, too. There are more flavours
that recur, but I haven't sorted them all out yet.

St. Casimir's Cathedral, Vilnius

As with Germany and England, the focus seems to be far more on
drinkability and balance than on extreme and wild beers. That could be
another reason for Ratebeer scores being low. At the same time, there
seems to be general love of experimentation and playing around, much
as in Belgium. So far I've had beers with raspberry leaves, red
clover, roasted walnuts, roasted hemp seeds, and a few other
surprises.

So there you have the picture, as far as I've been able to assemble
it. It is definitely incomplete and probably wrong in places. The
important thing for me is that it should be obvious by now that this
truly is a great beer culture, so far unfairly neglected. If you want
to explore, please pay careful attention to the freshness of the
beer. Draft beer seems to generally be the safest choice, and the
closer to the brewery you are, the better.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it's a mystery to me
why Lithuania isn't overrun with beer tourists.

1. "Kaimiškas" literally means "from countryside". As you correctly state, it's origins come from everyday brewing practices of common countrymen, not breweries. Today, the official but hopelessly outdated Lithuanian beer regulation recognizes "kaimiškas" as one of three beer cathegories (the other two being "beer" and "wheat beer"). According to it, I quote: "'kaimiškas' has to be made from barley malt, boiled water and hop products, by fermenting unclarified wort (i.e. wort that hasn't had proteins separated from it), using brewers yeast. 'Kaimiškas' beer is not filtered." Luckily, the countryside brewers don't care much about this regulation.

2. You are correct by saying that Lithuanian countryside brewers don't cathegorize their beers in styles. Yet there are descriptions/names that could loosely be called styles. One way of distringuishing is by process - "keptinis" and "dūminis" would fall into that group, just as "tekintas" ("flown"), "mieštinis" ("mashed"), "darytinis" ("makers"). Some literature indicates that the same "keptinis" could be applied to beers made in at least three ways (baked malt loafs, baked grains, stone beers). Other cathegorisation group is by characteristics of final product, such as colour - "šviesus/tamsus" (pale/dark), strength - "pirmokas, antrokas, trečiokas" (beer made from first, second, third runnings). Street names for "styles" could be anecdotal - "sriuba" ("soup" - for weeker beers), "molis" ("clay" - stronger ones.)